Justice and Virtue

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of the word “justice” is a certain question that I think challenges morality: is refusing to tell the full truth morally equivalent to lying? Let’s take the classic murderer at the door situation: you open the door to a friend in a clear panic, begging for refuge as they breathlessly tell you someone is trying to kill them. And then, if you open the door again to a knife-wielding stranger with a murderous glint in his eyes, how would you respond if he asks about your friend? Do you lie to him or simply answer with something that is technically true without telling them where your friend actually is? Either way, your friend would be saved by your misdirection because the murderer would be left with the wrong idea about their whereabouts. Is there, then, a difference?

Kant has an answer. By the universal maxim test, lying to the murderer is morally unworthy because, if the entire world lied, nothing would be believed and truth would cease to exist. On the other hand, the only effect created by everyone not telling the full truth is forcing the world to be more specific in questions — there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that, is there? Certainly not, but I just don’t think generalizing an action like this is justifiable. Everyone has different stories, different situations, different circumstances, so how can an action’s moral worth be generalized?

People’s unique experiences matter, so it doesn’t feel right for justice to be approached from a purely deontological perspective — that is, a perspective based on a certain set of rules, of maxims. However, to define it purely based on consequence like utilitarians suggest isn’t right either because even if the same effect is created, the events that led up to it can be starkly different. Say the reason for the murderer chasing your friend was to take revenge for the slaughter of his farming village. Would you then feel the same obligation to defend them? Thus, I feel true justice emphasizes virtue. By this, if we value the virtue of truth and avoid deception, there is no difference between lying and hiding the truth from the murderer, because we know we’re misleading him… but that doesn’t make them both the wrong things to do.

Both can be classified as morally worthy because all virtues cannot be weighted equally. Instead, we have to judge, in any situation, what virtues we prioritize and why. There is more than just the virtue of truth to consider with the murderer at the door: it can absolutely be argued that, by telling the truth, you are not exhibiting the virtue of saving those in need. The virtue of saving those in need greatly outweighs the virtue of truth, because the virtue of truth cannot exist in the first place if there is no one to carry it out. If we were to allow death to occur on the basis that we are upholding truth, it doesn’t become virtuous. No one is going to comment on the positive moral character involved in an act of murder, are they? Even though this is the case, there is still an unanswered question — what happened to all the individual stories? Shouldn’t we consider the virtues involved in other people’s decisions if they too are involved in a moral dilemma? To be honest, I’m not sure there is a way to perfectly apply virtue that includes everyone involved in any given situation, because we’ll never be able to know the true reality of any situation, so we’re going to have to always work with just our perception. However, if we, at the very least, try to weigh the virtues involved in any moral dilemma, is it not better than just ignoring them? It becomes the lesser of two evils, and I think that, because no philosophy, no moral ruling, no mindset is going to be without flaws, that’s all we really can accomplish.